wooden shutters, and, while the summer morning sunshine flooded the
room, she moved from piece to piece of the old furniture, carefully
dusting it all. The room was large and lofty; there was no carpet on the
inlaid floor, but a tapestry rug lay under the table in the center of
the apartment; everything was spindle-legged, chairs, tables, the old
piano, two cabinets, a sofa, a card-table, and two little tabourets
embroidered in Scriptural scenes, reduced now to shadows, Joseph and his
wicked brethren having faded to the same dull yellow hue, which Gardis
used to think was not the discrimination that should have been shown
between the just and the unjust. The old cabinets were crowded with
curious little Chinese images and vases, and on the high mantel were
candelabra with more crocodiles on them, and a large mirror which had so
long been veiled in gauze that Gardis had never fairly seen the fat,
gilt cherubs that surrounded it. A few inches of wax-candle still
remained in the candelabra, but they were never lighted, a tallow
substitute on the table serving as a nucleus during the eight months of
warm weather when the evenings were spent in the drawing-room. When it
was really cold, a fire was kindled in the boudoir--a narrow chamber in
the center of the large rambling old mansion, where, with closed doors
and curtained windows, the three sat together, Cousin Copeland reading
aloud, generally from the "Spectator," often pausing to jot down little
notes as they occurred to him in his orderly memorandum-book--"mere
outlines of phrases, but sufficiently full to recall the desired train
of thought," he observed. The ladies embroidered, Miss Margaretta
sitting before the large frame she had used when a girl. They did all
the sewing for the household (very little new material, and much
repairing of old), but these domestic labors were strictly confined to
the privacy of their own apartments; in the drawing-room or boudoir they
always embroidered. Gardis remembered this with sadness as she removed
the cover from the large frame, and glanced at "Moses in the Bulrushes,"
which her inexperienced hand could never hope to finish; she was
thinking of her aunt, but any one else would have thought of the
bulrushes, which were now pink, now saffron, and now blue, after some
mediæval system of floss-silk vegetation.
Having gone all around the apartment and dusted everything, Chinese
images and all, Gardis opened the old piano and gently played a little
tune. Miss Margaretta had been her only teacher, and the young girl's
songs were old-fashioned; but the voice was sweet and full, and before
she knew it she was filling the house with her melody.
"Little Cupid one day in a myrtle-bough strayed.
And among the sweet blossoms he playfully played,
Plucking many a sweet from the boughs of the tree,
Till he felt that his finger was stung by a bee,"
sang Gardis, and went on blithely through the whole, giving Mother
Venus's advice archly, and adding a shower of improvised trills at the
end.
"Bravo!" said a voice from the garden below.
Rushing to the casement, Miss Duke beheld, first with astonishment, then
dismay, two officers in the uniform of the United States army standing
at the front door. They bowed courteously, and one of them said, "Can I
see the lady of the house?"
"I--I am the lady," replied Gardis, confusedly; then drawing back, with
the sudden remembrance that she should not have shown herself at all,
she ran swiftly up to the study for Cousin Copeland. But Cousin Copeland
was not there, and the little mistress remembered with dismay that old
Dinah was out in the corn-field, and that Pompey had gone fishing. There
was nothing for it, then, but to go down and face the strangers.
Summoning all her self-possession, Miss Duke descended. She would have
preferred to hold parley from the window over the doorway, like the
ladies of olden time, but she feared it would not be dignified, seeing
that the times were no longer olden, and therefore she went down to the
entrance where the two were awaiting her. "Shall I ask them in?" she
thought. "What would Aunt Margaretta have done?" The Gardiston spirit
was hospitable to the core; but these--these were the Vandals, the
despots, under whose presence the whole fair land was groaning. No; she
would not ask them in.
The elder officer, a grave young man of thirty, was spokesman. "Do I
address Miss Gardiston?" he said.
"I am Miss Duke. My aunt, Miss Gardiston, is not living," replied
Gardis.
"Word having been received that the yellow fever has appeared on the
coast, we have been ordered to take the troops a few miles inland and go
into camp immediately, Miss Duke. The grove west of this house, on the
bank of the river, having been selected as camping-ground for a portion
of the command, we have called to say that you need feel no alarm at the
proximity of the soldiers; they will be under strict orders not to
trespass upon your grounds."
"Thanks," said Gardis mechanically; but she was alarmed; they both saw
that.
"I assure you, Miss Duke, that there is not the slightest cause for
nervousness," said the younger officer, bowing as he spoke.
"And your servants will not be enticed away, either," added the other.
"We have only two, and they--would not go," replied Gardis, not
aggressively, but merely stating her facts.
The glimmer of a smile crossed the face of the younger officer, but the
other remained unmoved.
"My name, madam, is Newell--David Newell, captain commanding the company
that will be encamped here. I beg you to send me word immediately if
anything occurs to disturb your quiet," he said.
Then the two saluted the little mistress with formal courtesy, and
departed, walking down the path together with a quick step and soldierly
bearing, as though they were on parade.
"Ought I to have asked them in?" thought Gardis; and she went slowly up
to the drawing-room again and closed the piano. "I wonder who said
'bravo'? The younger one, I presume." And she presumed correctly.
At lunch (corn-bread and milk) Cousin Copeland's old-young face appeared
promptly at the dining-room door. Cousin Copeland, Miss Margaretta's
cousin, was a little old bachelor, whose thin dark hair had not turned
gray, and whose small bright eyes needed no spectacles; he dressed
always in black, with low shoes on his small feet, and his clothes
seemed never to wear out, perhaps because his little frame hardly
touched them anywhere; the cloth certainly was not strained. Everything
he wore was so old-fashioned, however, that he looked like the pictures
of the high-collared, solemn little men who, accompanied by ladies all
bonnet, are depicted in English Sunday-school books following funeral
processions, generally of the good children who die young.
"O Cousin Copeland, where were you this morning when I went up to your
study?" began Gardis, full of the event of the morning.
"You may well ask where I was, my child," replied the bachelor, cutting
his toasted corn-bread into squares with mathematical precision. "A most
interesting discovery--most interesting. Not being thoroughly satisfied
as to the exact identity of the first wife of one of the second cousins
of our grandfather, a lady who died young and left no descendants, yet
none the less a Gardiston, at least by marriage, the happy idea occurred
to me to investigate more fully the contents of the papers in barrel
number two on the east side of the central garret--documents that I
myself classified in 1849, as collateral merely, not relating to the
main line. I assure you, my child, that I have spent there, over that
barrel, a most delightful morning--most delightful. I had not realized
that there was so much interesting matter in store for me when I shall
have finished the main line, which will be, I think, in about a year and
a half--a year and a half. And I have good hopes of finding there, too,
valuable information respecting this first wife of one of the second
cousins of our respected grandfather, a lady whose memory, by some
strange neglect, has been suffered to fall into oblivion. I shall be
proud to constitute myself the one to rescue it for the benefit of
posterity," continued the little man, with chivalrous enthusiasm, as he
took up his spoon. (There was one spoon to spare now; Gardis often
thought of this with a saddened heart.) Miss Duke had not interrupted
her cousin by so much as an impatient glance; trained to regard him with
implicit respect, and to listen always to his gentle, busy little stream
of talk, she waited until he had finished all he had to say about this
"first wife of one of the second cousins of our grandfather" (who,
according to the French phrase-books, she could not help thinking,
should have inquired immediately for the green shoe of her aunt's
brother-in-law's wife) before she told her story. Cousin Copeland shook
his head many times during the recital. He had not the bitter feelings
of Miss Margaretta concerning the late war; in fact, he had never come
down much farther than the Revolution, having merely skirmished a
little, as it were, with the war of 1812; but he knew his cousin's
opinions, and respected their memory. So he "earnestly hoped" that some
other site would be selected for the camp. Upon being told that the blue
army-wagons had already arrived, he then "earnestly hoped" that the
encampment would not be of long continuance. Cousin Copeland had hoped a
great many things during his life; his capacity for hoping was cheering
and unlimited; a hope carefully worded and delivered seemed to him
almost the same thing as reality; he made you a present of it, and
rubbed his little hands cheerfully afterward, as though now all had been
said.
"Do you think I should have asked them in?" said Gardis, hesitatingly.
"Most certainly, most certainly. Hospitality has ever been one of our
characteristics as a family," said Cousin Copeland, finishing the last
spoonful of milk, which had come out exactly even with the last little
square of corn-bread.
"But I did not ask them."
"Do I hear you aright? You did not ask them, Cousin Gardiston?" said the
little bachelor, pausing gravely by the table, one hand resting on its
shining mahogany, the other extended in the attitude of surprise.
"Yes, Cousin Copeland, you do. But these are officers of the United
States army, and you know Aunt Margaretta's feelings regarding them."
"True," said Cousin Copeland, dropping his arm; "you are right; I had
forgotten. But it is a very sad state of things, my dear--very sad. It
was not so in the old days at Gardiston House: then we should have
invited them to dinner."
"We could not do that," said Gardis thoughtfully, "on account of forks
and spoons; there would not be enough to go--But I would not invite
them anyway," she added, the color rising in her cheeks, and her eyes
flashing. "Are they not our enemies, and the enemies of our country?
Vandals? Despots?"
"Certainly," said Cousin Copeland, escaping from these signs of feminine
disturbance with gentle haste. Long before, he was accustomed to remark
to a bachelor friend that an atmosphere of repose was best adapted to
his constitution and to his work. He therefore now retired to the first
wife of the second cousin of his grandfather, and speedily forgot all
about the camp and the officers. Not so Gardis. Putting on her straw
hat, she went out into the garden to attend to her flowers and work off
her annoyance. Was it annoyance, or excitement merely? She did not know.
But she did know that the grove was full of men and tents, and she could
see several of the blue-coats fishing in the river. "Very well," she
said to herself hotly; "we shall have no dinner, then!" But the river
was not hers, and so she went on clipping the roses, and tying back the
vines all the long bright afternoon, until old Dinah came to call her to
dinner. As she went, the bugle sounded from the grove, and she seemed to
be obeying its summons; instantly she sat down on a bench to wait until
its last echo had died away. "I foresee that I shall hate that bugle,"
she said to herself.
The blue-coats were encamped in the grove three long months. Captain
Newell and the lieutenant, Roger Saxton, made no more visits at
Gardiston House; but, when they passed by and saw the little mistress in
the garden or at the window, they saluted her with formal courtesy. And
the lieutenant looked back; yes, there was no doubt of that--the
lieutenant certainly looked back. Saxton was a handsome youth; tall and
finely formed, he looked well in his uniform, and knew it. Captain
Newell was not so tall--a gray-eyed, quiet young man. "Commonplace,"
said Miss Gardis. The bugle still gave forth its silvery summons. "It is
insupportable," said the little mistress daily; and daily Cousin
Copeland replied, "Certainly." But the bugle sounded on all the same.
One day a deeper wrath came. Miss Duke discovered Dinah in the act of
taking cakes to the camp to sell to the soldiers!
"Well, Miss Gardis, dey pays me well for it, and we's next to not'ing
laid up for de winter," replied the old woman anxiously, as the irate
little mistress forbade the sale of so much as "one kernel of corn."
"Dey don't want de corn, but dey pays well for de cakes, dearie Miss
Gardis. Yer see, yer don't know not'ing about it; it's only ole Dinah
makin' a little money for herself and Pomp," pleaded the faithful
creature, who would have given her last crumb for the family, and died
content. But Gardis sternly forbade all dealings with the camp from that
time forth, and then she went up to her room and cried like a child.
"They knew it, of course," she thought; "no doubt they have had many a
laugh over the bakery so quietly carried on at Gardiston House. They are
capable of supposing even that I sanctioned it." And with angry tears
she fell to planning how she could best inform them of their mistake,
and overwhelm them with her scorn. She prepared several crushing little
speeches, and held them in reserve for use; but the officers never came
to Gardiston House, and of course she never went to the camp--no, nor so
much as looked that way; so there was no good opportunity for delivering
them. One night, however, the officers did come to Gardiston House--not
only the officers, but all the men; and Miss Duke was very glad to see
them.
It happened in this way. The unhappy State had fallen into the hands of
double-faced, conscienceless whites, who used the newly enfranchised
blacks as tools for their evil purposes. These leaders were sometimes
emigrant Northerners, sometimes renegade Southerners, but always
rascals. In the present case they had inflamed their ignorant followers
to riotous proceedings in the city, and the poor blacks, fancying that
the year of jubilee had come, when each man was to have a plantation,
naturally began by ejecting the resident owners before the grand
division of spoils. At least this was their idea. During the previous
year, when the armies were still marching through the land, they had
gone out now and then in a motiveless sort of way and burned the fine
plantation residences near the city; and now, chance having brought
Gardiston to their minds, out they came, inconsequent and reasonless as
ever, to burn Gardiston. But they did not know the United States troops
were there.
There was a siege of ten minutes, two or three volleys from the
soldiers, and then a disorderly retreat; one or two wounded were left on
the battle-field (Miss Duke's flower-garden), and the dining-room
windows were broken. Beyond this there was no slaughter, and the victors
drew off their forces in good order to the camp, leaving the officers to
receive the thanks of the household--Cousin Copeland, enveloped in a
mammoth dressing-gown that had belonged to his grandfather, and Gardis,
looking distractingly pretty in a hastily donned short skirt and a
little white sack (she had no dressing-gown), with her brown hair waving
over her shoulders, and her cheeks scarlet from excitement. Roger Saxton
fell into love on the spot: hitherto he had only hovered, as it were, on
the border.
"Had you any idea she was so exquisitely beautiful?" he exclaimed, as
they left the old house in the gray light of dawn.
"Miss Duke is not exquisitely beautiful; she is not even beautiful,"
replied the slow-voiced Newell. "She has the true Southern colorless, or
rather cream-colored, complexion, and her features are quite irregular."
"Colorless! I never saw more beautiful coloring in my life than she had
to-night," exclaimed Saxton.
"To-night, yes; I grant that. But it took a good-sized riot to bring it
to the surface," replied the impassive captain.
A guard was placed around the house at night and pickets sent down the
road for some time after this occurrence. Gardis, a prey to conflicting
feelings, deserted her usual haunts and shut herself up in her own
room, thinking, thinking what she ought to do. In the mean time, beyond
a formal note of inquiry delivered daily by a wooden-faced son of Mars,
the two officers made no effort toward a further acquaintance; the
lieutenant was on fire to attempt it, but the captain held him back. "It
is her place to make the advances now," he said. It was; and Gardis knew
it.
One morning she emerged from her retreat, and with a decided step sought
Cousin Copeland in his study. The little man had been disquieted by the
night attack; it had come to him vaguely once or twice since then that
perhaps there might be other things to do in the world besides copying
family documents; but the nebula--it was not even a definite
thought--had faded, and now he was at work again with more ardor than
ever.
"Cousin Copeland," said Gardis, appearing at the door of the study, "I
have decided at last to yield to your wishes, and--and invite the
officers to dinner."
"By all means," said Cousin Copeland, putting down his pen and waving
his hands with a hearty little air of acquiescence--"by all means." It
was not until long afterward that he remembered he had never expressed
any wish upon the subject whatever. But it suited Gardis to imagine that
he had done so; so she imagined it.
"We have little to work with," continued the little mistress of the
house; "but Dinah is an excellent cook, and--and--O cousin, I do not
wish to do it; I can not bear the mere thought of it; but oh! we must,
we must." Tears stood in her eyes as she concluded.
"They are going soon," suggested Cousin Copeland, hesitatingly, biting
the end of his quill.
"That is the very reason. They are going soon, and we have done nothing
to acknowledge their aid, their courtesy--we Gardistons, both of us.
They have saved our home, perhaps our lives; and we--we let them go
without a word! O cousin, it must not be. Something we must do;
_noblesse oblige!_ I have thought and thought, and really there is
nothing but this: we must invite them to dinner," said Miss Duke,
tragically.
"I--I always liked little dinners," said Cousin Copeland, in a gentle,
assenting murmur.
Thus it happened that the officers received two formal little notes with
the compliments of Miss Gardiston Duke inclosed, and an invitation to
dinner. "Hurrah!" cried Saxton. "At last!"
The day appointed was at the end of the next week; Gardis had decided
that that would be more ceremonious. "And they are to understand," she
said proudly, "that it is a mere dinner of ceremony, and not of
friendship."
"Certainly," said Cousin Copeland.
Old Dinah was delighted. Gardis brought out some of the half-year rent
money, and a dinner was planned, of few dishes truly, but each would be
a marvel of good cooking, as the old family servants of the South used
to cook when time was nothing to them. It is not much to them now; but
they have heard that it ought to be, and that troubles the perfection of
their pie-crust. There was a little wine left in the wine-room--a queer
little recess like a secret chamber; and there was always the crocodile
china and the few pieces of cut glass. The four forks would be enough,
and Gardis would take no jelly, so that the spoons would serve also; in
fact, the dinner was planned to accommodate the silver. So far, so good.
But now as to dress; here the poor little mistress was sadly pinched.
She knew this; but she hoped to make use of a certain well-worn
changeable silk that had belonged to Miss Margaretta, in hue a dull
green and purple. But, alas! upon inspection she discovered that the
faithful garment had given way at last, after years of patient service,
and now there was nothing left but mildew and shreds. The invitation had
been formally accepted; the dinner was in course of preparation: what
should she do? She had absolutely nothing, poor child, save the two
faded old lawns which she wore ordinarily, and the one shabby woolen
dress for cooler weather. "If they were anything but what they are," she
said to herself, after she had again and again turned over the contents
of her three bureau drawers, "I would wear my every-day dress without a
moment's thought or trouble. But I will not allow these men, belonging
to the despot army of the North, these aliens forced upon us by a strong
hand and a hard fate, to smile at the shabby attire of a Southern lady."
She crossed the hall to Miss Margaretta's closed room: she would search
every corner; possibly there was something she did not at the moment
recall. But, alas! only too well did she know the contents of the closet
and the chest of drawers, the chest of drawers and the closet; had she
not been familiar with every fold and hue from her earliest childhood?
Was there nothing else? There was the cedar chamber, a little cedar
cupboard in the wall, where Miss Margaretta kept several stately old
satin bonnets, elaborate structures of a past age. Mechanically Gardis
mounted the steps, and opened the little door half-way up the wall. The
bonnets were there, and with them several packages; these she took down
and opened. Among various useless relics of finery appeared, at last,
one whole dress; narrow-skirted, short, with a scantily fashioned waist,
it was still a complete robe of its kind, in color a delicate blue, the
material clinging and soft like Canton crape. Folded with the dress were
blue kid slippers and a silk belt with a broad buckle. The package bore
a label with this inscription, "The gown within belonged to my respected
mother, Pamela Gardiston," in the handwriting of Miss Margaretta; and
Gardis remembered that she had seen the blue skirt once, long ago, in
her childhood. But Miss Margaretta allowed no prying, and her niece had
been trained to ask permission always before entering her apartment, and
to refrain from touching anything, unless asked to do so while there.
Now the poverty-stricken little hostess carried the relics carefully
across to her own room, and, locking the door, attired herself, and
anxiously surveyed the effect. The old-fashioned gown left her
shoulders and arms bare, the broad belt could not lengthen the short
waist, and the skirt hardly covered her ankles. "I can wear my old
muslin cape, but my arms will have to show, and my feet too," she
thought, with nervous distress. The creased blue kid slippers were full
of little holes and somewhat mildewed, but the girl mended them bravely;
she said to herself that she need only walk down to the dining-room and
back; and, besides, the rooms would not be brightly lighted. If she had
had anything to work with, even so much as one yard of material, she
would have made over the old gown; but she had absolutely nothing, and
so she determined to overcome her necessities by sheer force of will.
"How do I look, cousin?" she said, appearing at the study-door on the
afternoon of the fatal day. She spoke nervously, and yet proudly, as
though defying criticism. But Cousin Copeland had no thought of
criticism.
"My child," he said, with pleased surprise, "you look charming. I am
very glad you have a new gown, dear, very glad."
"Men are all alike," thought Gardis exultingly. "The others will think
it is new also."